Book review: Science and the Afterlife Experience

Science and the Afterlife Experience is the concluding volume in a trilogy by Oxford-trained philosopher Chris Carter, who previously brought us Science and Psychic Phenomena and Science and the Near-Death Experience. Together, the books meticulously build a case for the proposition that mind is more than simply an emergent property of matter, and that materialism is fatally flawed because it cannot deal with a raft of evidence for paranormal phenomena and postmortem survival. All three books are outstanding contributions to the field of parapsychology, but Science and the Afterlife Experience trumps the other two and brings Carter's extended argument to a dramatic conclusion.

Reveals the evidence of life beyond death

• Examines 125 years of scientific research into reincarnation, apparitions, and communication with the dead showing these phenomena are real

• Reveals the existence of higher planes of consciousness where the souls of the dead can choose to advance or manifest once again on Earth

• Explains how these findings have been ignored and denied because they are incompatible with materialist doctrines

In this book, Chris Carter shows that evidence of life beyond death exists and has been around for millennia, predating any organized religion. Focusing on three key phenomena--reincarnation, apparitions, and communications from the dead--Carter reveals 125 years of documented scientific studies by independent researchers and the British and American Societies for Psychical Research that rule out hoaxes, fraud, and hallucinations and prove these afterlife phenomena are real.

The author examines historic and modern accounts of detailed past-life memories, visits from the deceased, and communications with the dead via medium and automatic writing as well as the scientific methods used to confirm these experiences. He explains how these findings on the afterlife have been ignored and denied because they are incompatible with the prevailing doctrine of materialism. Sharing messages from the dead themselves describing the afterlife, Carter reveals how consciousness exists outside the parameters of biological evolution and emerges through the medium of the brain to use the physical world as a springboard for growth. After death, souls can advance to higher planes of consciousness or manifest once again on Earth. Carter’s rigorous argument proves--beyond any reasonable doubt--not only that consciousness survives death and continues in the afterlife, but that it precedes birth as well.